


The Undoing

by LikeSatellites



Category: Kpop - Fandom, VIXX
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Gang World, End of the World, Group Sex, Kidnapping, M/M, Polyamorous Pack, Post-Nuclear War, Tattoos, angsty hyuk, gang leader cha hakyeon, minor hyuk/sungjae, ot6 with pairings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-03
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-10-27 03:42:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10800969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LikeSatellites/pseuds/LikeSatellites
Summary: It wasn’t like Sanghyuk didn’t see it coming.Of course he did. They all did.Three in the morning and Sungjae was throwing a shoe at Sanghyuk’s face to wake him, hissing, “Get up or die!”Three in the fucking morning and that was when they decided to take Old City.aka it's the end of the world and Sanghyuk discovers why they flocked to Hakyeon in the aftermath. Why they would do anything for him.Because he would too.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: bet y'all didn't think I would be back so soon, eh? Well, unfortunately for YOU, I have a problem!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Anyhow, here's my angst chapterfic contribution to the fandom, a vastly different universe from All Your Mysteries, but I've been watching The Handmaid's Tale, and I'm fucked up. But also writing an orgy made me want to write OT6 (especially everyone loving on leader bc he's a sparkly sunshine bab who deserves it, and he would totally protect his people if the world ended). WELP, please comment and kudo and let me know if you like this au and want more (even though I'm gonna write it anyhow because now it is a parasite living inside me and I haven't even written the sex yet aHA)!!  
> also, to clarify, the ot6 will have specific pairings that stand out because I'm gay for my ships  
> also also, sorry for any errors, I am too lazy to edit this fic even though I'm a proofreader for a living LOL
> 
> (just created a twitter, so if you all want to connect, find me @likesatellitez (not joking))

SANGHYUK:

 

Sanghyuk wouldn’t say he’s desperate, when they bring him in front of Hakyeon. 

He’s just...without alternative choices. 

If that means desperation, then, sure, he’s a little bit desperate. 

Hakyeon tilts his head to the side, appraising Sanghyuk for a few beats of silence, though it is never truly silent down here--the trains running above them, the pipes leaking in a steady  _ dripdripdrip _ , the creaking of old, rusted building foundations struggling in weak ground. 

“But you’re so…” Hakyeon gestures vaguely in the air. 

“What?”

Hakyeon tips his chin up, eyes flashing in the dark. 

“Tall.”

 

TWO YEARS EARLIER:

It wasn’t like Sanghyuk didn’t see it coming. 

Of course he did. They all did. 

Three in the morning and Sungjae was throwing a shoe at Sanghyuk’s face to wake him, hissing, “Get up or die!” 

Three in the fucking morning and that was when they decided to take Old City. 

Everyone had known it was a matter of time before it happened, but secretly, and Sanghyuk includes himself here, everyone had hoped it wouldn’t be so painful. It wouldn’t be like when they watched J-town burn on the news. Hours after hours of footage. It felt like it never stopped burning. Sanghyuk and Sungjae sitting in front of their television, all variety shows and dramas cancelled, eating fried chicken and watching the flames. 

The difference then was the stations never ran the sound. 

Three in the morning and Sanghyuk didn’t think he would ever forget the way the whole city seemed to stop for a moment just to scream. 

Everyone looking up from the streets, knowing there was somewhere they should be headed, somewhere they should be running to, as the lights rose up, up over them and then the city went dark. 

He and Sungjae climbing under the manhole after a family of three teenage girls who all seemed stunned into silence. 

That was the other thing. After the collective scream, after the sounds of collapsing, shaking, twisting, breaking that seemed like they would never end--

It was just quiet. Dark and quiet. 

Sungjae never let go of Sanghyuk’s hand, as if Sanghyuk would get lost as they wound their way through the sewer, socks soaked in who knows what, hair coated in rubble and dust and ash, blind as a damn bat. 

The funniest thing when they got there--the colony--was that everyone still had to ask: “Where were you? You know, when it happened.”

Did it matter? Weren’t they all at the same place? The  _ fucked  _ place. The place where everything caught fire and everyone screamed. Obviously. 

Sungjae always humored them, the askers, squeezing Sanghyuk’s hand and smiling like, “Just asleep. We were just asleep.”

Sanghyuk, under his breath after the fiftieth time of Sungjae answering: “It was three in the fucking morning, what else.”

The hardest thing to get used to was the quiet, after. 

Sanghyuk was so used to the sounds of Old City. The Z train that ran parallel to his apartment building, grinding against the rails every fifteen minutes or so, even in the night. The constant shouting of his neighbors, blasting their music and smoking their sweet smelling cigarettes. The feral cats perched on his balcony when in heat, bellowing their agony at him as if he could help. The smooth rush of cars six stories below. 

They were lucky they were only on the sixth floor. 

“Everyone above eight…” Sungjae murmured, eyes scrunched tight, face pale in the dim firelight. 

“Just say it, ‘Jae,” Sanghyuk said, gesturing around. “They died. Everyone died. Died, as in past tense of die. They perished. They suffered. Can we talk about this like it actually happened to us and not like--”

“Hyuk,” Sungjae hissed, nodding his head at the little boy, Moonbin, blinking over at them from across the firepit. 

“What? He was there. I’m sure he knows. Right, Binnie?” Sanghyuk cooed. “Everyone died~”

Moonbin tipped his head to the side, still blinking his wide, bright eyes. He burbled a laugh, grabbing at his own cheeks and jiggling them in his pudgy pink hands. 

Sungjae sighed and moved to the other side of the hall--that’s what they called the big open area in the sewers where they set up their camp. Made it sound like a grand palace. Ah, yes, the great hall, smelling of sweet piss and leaking mysterious substances from the grand concrete roof. 

Where they hid until the world stopped burning. If it would ever stop burning. 

Sungjae slept beside another boy, Minhyuk, that night, the night Sanghyuk spoke of death to a child, and Sanghyuk heard their voices over the sound of the fire snapping at the shreds of clothing and waste. Heard the exasperated sighs and the gentle, soft replies from Minhyuk. 

Minhyuk was already a refugee of another disaster from years ago. From the earthquake that shattered the island off the coast of Old City. Sungjae’s family was originally from the same island, which was maybe the reason Sungjae seemed to gravitate to Minhyuk after they found each other in the tunnels. Sanghyuk tried not to be jealous because what was the use of jealousy when companionship was just about the only possession they all still had to call their own. 

Another refugee boy from Minhyuk’s island, Jackson had been spending the last couple weeks attempting to mend the music player he’d been wearing when Old City collapsed. 

“It was working just fine,” he said, peeling the case off and peering inside. 

“It’s almost like the universe is telling you that beauty is dead,” Sanghyuk replied, turning away when Jackson gave a perfectly articulated pout of despair.  

Moonbin toddled over to Sanghyuk when he turned towards the fire, fingers in his mouth, pulling at his cheeks from the inside as if to flip them inside out. 

“Hyeogie,” he said, more of a gurgle than a name as he fought to get the words out around his little fingers. 

“Moobie,” Sanghyuk replied, attempting to reenact the slurred gurgle Moonbin used. 

“Boom,” Moonbin whispered, leaning his little face close to Sanghyuk’s. 

“What about it?”

“Boom,” Moonbin repeated, and it was then Sanghyuk realized Moonbin was showing him with his hands. Tugging at his skin from the inside. Jerking to expose his gums. “Boom.”

Moonbin took his spit-coated fingers and danced them away from his face. Like fireworks. Like--

“Boom.”

Sanghyuk pressed his fist to his mouth. He wasn’t sure if he would scream or puke. 

Moonbin curled up against him, his faint warmth vaguely comforting as Sanghyun attempted to sleep, trying not to imagine his own body mimicking the motions of Moonbin’s pudgy hands. Trying not to picture Moonbin’s wide, dark eyes watching as his skin burst from his body, muscles pulling away from bone, everything inside going outside, everything going boom. 

 

A month after they went underground, people started venturing back up to the surface, too hungry and chilled and anxious to stay underground any longer. Gathering supplies, checking the damage, looking for signs of life, hoping to find some relic of normalcy. 

Sanghyuk left Sungjae behind to go. His skin was itching from all the darkness. He’d never been one of those guys who cared enough to hide inside during the summer to keep from “damaging” his skin with tan lines and melanin. Darkness drove him stir crazy. 

There weren’t really any words for how it felt to see light again. 

Sanghyuk hadn’t ever been good at words, at metaphors. Back when school was mandatory, before it became more important to learn practical skills for the end of the world, Sanghyuk had hated language classes. It always seemed frivolous to learn what they instinctively already knew. Sanghyuk could communicate well enough without fruity analogies. 

If he had to equate seeing the sun to anything, he’d have to say it was like...like having light poured directly into his skull from a kettle. Boiling, steaming hot light just streaming in through his eye sockets, filling up his skull until his whole head finally felt warm again. 

Once the hazy blue hue passed and Sanghyuk could see, could process, it was unreal. 

Like someone took everything he’d ever seen and scribbled over it with thick, heavy black lines. 

Even after seeing J-town on the news, even after watching hours upon hours of the footage, the wreckage, Sanghyuk wasn’t prepared for how it felt to mourn absolutely everything at once. 

He felt like kissing the stones. Like picking up the dirt and carting it back down with him into the sewers just to ask everyone: “what do we do? Do you see this? Do you see what they’ve taken from us?”

You don’t just wake up one day with nothing. It shouldn’t be possible. 

But it was. 

Sanghyuk’s building, a rough red brick complex that had been around since the city was founded, was unrecognizable. Coated in ash and dust, parts of it sunken into the earth, Sanghyuk could only rely on his sense of direction, his sense of  _ this should be here, it has to be here _ . 

The left wall, the one he and Sungjae had carved their names into when they were kids--

There were no walls left, Sanghyuk reminded himself. He could just sense it, sense how immense it had seemed when he was seven and picked up a hefty chunk of gravel to scrape over and over  _ Sanghyuk was here _

_ Sungjae is a butt _

After which Sungjae had grabbed the stone back, rolled his eyes, scribbled over it. 

_ Sanghyuk and Sungjae have butts _ .

If he’d known that would be the building’s lasting memory of the two of them, he might’ve thought of a more clever or romantic carving to make. 

Sanghyuk didn’t even know what he was looking for. Food? What--an abandoned loaf of bread somewhere that had somehow avoided getting blown up and somehow was still safe for human consumption? 

Sanghyuk crossed the street, stepping over splits in the concrete where heat rose up like the old vents above the subway. He tried to ignore the crumpled heaps of ash and rubble that reminded him of petrified bodies fleeing from volcanic eruptions. Tried even harder to ignore the scent of rot, the very human scent of rot. 

He saw a man squatting beside a pile of shattered glass, reaching down as if to touch it. He saw a woman shouting at a still-smoking collapsed stucco building. 

Fuck. 

He forced himself to keep looking, while somehow not looking at anything at all long enough to really process it. It was easier that way. 

It was easier not to use any senses whatsoever.

In the end, he found himself standing at the entrance to his old subway tunnel, the doors caved inward, as if the tunnel had tried to heave in one last breath and ended up sucking everything around it down. 

That was how it always felt. Like everything was breathing. All the time. The city was always, always breathing. 

In the end, all Sanghyuk found was a jacket. A light leather jacket, black, in surprisingly good condition under all the dust. It was still warm then, but Sanghyuk shrugged it on. It was short in the arms, a little tight at the shoulders, but beneath the scent of smoke, it smelled like life. It smelled like a time before. Like safety. 

 

PRESENT: 

They’ve been back on the surface for only four months, but everything has already gone to shit. Back in the colony underground, they could all pretend they were the only ones left, they had only to deal with the meager few survivors. When they got to the surface, they realized there had been colonies all over, there were more survivors, there were more factions, there were problems that needed solutions. 

“It isn’t that bad,” Sungjae says, shoving at Sanghyuk’s back to usher him forward in the dinner line. 

“Waiting for an hour in the burning haze of the sun for some corn and canned beans,” Sanghyuk replies bitterly, holding out his wooden tray for the meager scoop of brown goopy beans and half cob of corn. “Livin’ the dream, my friend. The dream.”

Sungjae kicks at Sanghyuk’s ass with his dusty foot before turning to receive his own rations. He smiles genuinely at the woman serving the line. “Thanks Mrs. Yang.”

She flushes and nods. She hasn’t spoken since the day everything blew up. They’d gotten her name from the library card in her wallet. No ID, no insurance cards, just a library card. What a granny. 

Sanghyuk drops down under one of the thick metal shelters erected to provide shelter from the sun after they finally settled on the surface again. Without the shadow of the looming city buildings, Sanghyuk discovered the true agony of sunburn. 

One of the more jarring things about everyone being forced into direct light of the sun was that there was no more pretence of beauty.

Being in the sun is inevitable. Being pale is a sign that you’re avoiding your duties to the colony. 

Who gives a flying fuck if you’re beautiful when beauty contributes nothing to anyone?

Sanghyuk watches the color spread over his skin day by day, stretching from his hands first, his knees (arched up towards the sun when he lay on the rubble during his breaks in cleanup), his forearms, his calves, meeting at his stomach when he stripped his shirt from his back while hefting thick stones from the doorway of an old convenience store. 

Eventually Hyuk barely recognizes his own flesh. But he likes it. He likes the way his skin feels strong, the way it no longer itches and burns under the sunlight, the way it grows tough, almost leathery over his knuckles, elbows, knees. 

He never felt this way when he worked selling computer parts in the mall. 

Moonbin is five now, and he follows Sanghyuk around like an imprinted duckling, barefoot, waddling, tripping over stones and piles of dug-up dirt. 

Moonbin has somehow retained his soft, plush cheeks, even despite the minimal rations, and Sanghyuk hates how easily he’s manipulated by every stupid gesture the kid makes. 

“Go back,” he hisses, tearing at the rotting doorway of the convenience store so they can begin to build a new door. Build a new store entirely. Hope to recreate some kind of familiar structure.

“I follow,” Moonbin burbles, picking up warped, crushed can from some wreckage that seems to ooze orange paste. 

“Stop touching things,” Sanghyuk spits, swatting the can away from Moonbin’s fingers. 

Moonbin yelps, the sharp, jagged edge of the can’s lip scraping his thumb as Sanghyuk pushes it away. He immediately sucks his thumb into his mouth and whines around it as it bleeds. 

“For fuck’s sake, kid,” Sanghyuk says, squatting down in front of him and pulling his thumb from his mouth. Blood bubbles in a thick line over Moonbin’s little pink fingertip. “I don’t have any bandages.” 

He sighs and reaches for his discarded jacket, well-worn, the leather hot and soft after baking in the sun. Ripping the inside pocket, a silky purple fabric, he peels a line of it away and wraps it around Moonbin’s thumb. Moonbin looks like he’d rather have stuck it back into his mouth. 

Sanghyuk turns to gather his sack of tools, things they’d gathered from the wreckage or found in old construction sites beneath the city: rusty, rudimentary, the only shit that could survive the force of the blast. It’s a shame their entire lives were online, on drives, since none of them would be able to retrieve them now. Sanghyuk knew of people in the colonies who had photographs of their oldest ancestors but had none of themselves, their direct families. 

It was like starting over again, back at the beginning, back where everything was a struggle. 

Moonbin yelps again, and Sanghyuk is about to yell at him for agitating his wound when he hears engines. 

Thinking it must be a hallucination--it wouldn’t be his first--Sanghyuk rubs at his eyes with the heels of his hands and wheels around. 

“The little one.” 

There’s a figure in red, a deep maroon, his face shrouded by a mask over his nose and mouth, climbing from what looks like an old motorbike. Two other figures have grabbed at Moonbin’s arms, wrestling him into the back of a dust-coated heavy black armored car. Sanghyuk didn’t think cars could even still function. Where was the gas from? The parts? 

“W-wait,” Sanghyuk says, choking on a sensation he’s buried down deep since he watched the world end. He didn’t think he would ever feel something like that again, something that sharp, that imminent, that present in his body. But here he is again, motionless,  _ afraid _ . 

Sanghyuk had been ashamed, back then, to admit this, but he had to admit to himself that there was honestly something beautiful about it. About the way the sky had bloomed white, whiter, whiter again, beyond even recognition, until everything was gone, and there was nothing. There was something sublime in that moment, where he surpassed fear, surpassed terror, and he knew nothing would ever compare to this. Nothing would ever compare to the way it felt to watch the world die. 

And watching them take Moonbin isn’t the same--of course it isn’t. Moonbin is one body, one  _ child _ . But he is real, and he’s perfect and small and soft even after watching bodies rupture and everything going boom, and Sanghyuk can’t do anything. All he can do is watch. 

Moonbin pounds at the windows at the back of the car, his ruddy little face scrunched up as he screams. Sanghyuk can’t even hear him. It’s like his mind tuned out the sound completely, like the news had done while screening the destruction of their neighboring cities, not wanting to hear any more sounds of trauma.

And then he’s gone. 

 

Sungjae holds him, the two of them cocooned beneath woven blankets made of old scraps of clothing. Sanghyuk isn’t sure he even cries. Just breathes, the air wheezing in his lungs like it doesn’t want to be going through all this trouble. Like it would be easier to just stop. 

Jackson, in his own cocoon of blankets on the other side of their small canvas tent, says, “We were stupid to think we were the only ones.”

Sungjae pulls Sanghyuk tighter to his chest. “What would be the purpose of stealing a kid?”

Jackson sighs, a weary, heavy sound. “Don’t ask me that. I don’t want to think about it.”

Sanghyuk jerks in Sungjae’s arms, nuzzling into the warmth of his bare chest to keep from thinking about anything but that warmth of skin. 

“Is it the ones who dropped the bombs, the rebels?”

“I dunno,” Jackson says, curling into a little ball. 

“We’ve been living in a bubble,” Sanghyuk mutters, breath ghosting over Sungjae’s sternum. “We forgot that everyone wanted us dead. Surviving is the least of our worries.”

“It isn’t our fault they never told us why,” Sungjae cooes, fingers carding through Sanghyuk’s hair, tugging at the knots. 

“No, it’s our fault we never asked.”

 

They start hearing about underground factions,  _ gangs _ they’re calling them. Avoiders of the main colonies. Traitors to the cause of unity and protection for the whole. 

Sanghyuk finds it hilarious, thinking of the gangs he remembers from old movies. Tattooes and printed shirts and gelled hair and leather jackets.

Sanghyuk considers throwing on his own jacket and marching to the colony heads to declare himself a member of one of them. He could make up a name. A symbol. A catch phrase. 

When more colony members start disappearing, more members returning to nightly meetings to declare  _ they had a big black truck and it happened so fast and it must be them, right? The dissenters, the avoiders-- _

That’s when Sanghyuk first hears Hakyeon’s name.

It’s Jackson who hears it first. He hands Sanghyuk a handful of nearly burnt wheat crackers and says, “I saw some of them.”

Sanghyuk chews slowly, raising his eyebrows. “Them? Please be more specific with your gossip.”

“The guys still underground. One of the gangs or whatever. The ones people are calling Vee because they have those letters tattooed at the backs of their necks. A girl in my cleanup crew said she saw one too. She said he was kind of hot, actually. I can see that. Mysterious boys in all black with forbidden ink.”

Sanghyuk blinks, letting his features shift to display his apathy.

“Anyhow, I saw one of them chasing after a black van. He had what looked like a gun, but I can’t be sure. I’ve never actually seen one, what with them being banned or whatever. He shot at the back window of the van, shattered it. Another one of them was running over, to stop him, I think, and I heard his name.”

Sanghyuk really doesn’t want to be interested in this story. He doesn’t want to be interested in anything. 

But if this group wasn’t who took Moonbin, if they were potentially on the same side, except they had actually useful shit like guns--

“His name was Hakyeon, and I saw him and the other boy get on a motorbike and head towards the south end, near the old river site.”

Unable to mask his reaction, Sanghyuk draws in a sharp breath. 

The south end, assumed to have eroded completely, sunk into the old, dried up riverbed from the force of the explosion. That was where Sanghyuk gone to school as a child. Where he’d met Sungjae, where he’d--

“Did you...did you say Hakyeon?”

 

WONSHIK: 

Two years living in the same space, and Wonshik still has no predictor for Hakyeon’s moods. 

This one in particular, Wonshik muses, is beyond strange.

“They’re here,” Hakyeon mutters to himself, pacing around their den, tapping his middle and forefingers against the holster that held his gun tight to his hip. A nervous tick. That Wonshik could tell you outright. Hakyeon has three big ticks: the gun tapping, chewing the inside of his cheek like an inflated balloon, and--

Hakyeon barrels into him, pulling his shirt over his head, grabbing Wonshik’s hands, and guiding them to the softness of his hips. He sighs out contentedly at the touch of fingertips to his skin. 

Wonshik chuckles, pressing his lips to Hakyeon’s shoulder lightly. “Leader, you seem very tense this evening,” he teases, fingers dancing up the notches in Hakyeon’s spine, feeling how Hakyeon shivers beneath his hands. 

“You know I hate when you call me that,” Hakyeon says, dropping his forehead to Wonshik’s and shutting his eyes. 

“I’m sorry, sweet, special authority figure with no title,” Wonshik murmurs, pulling Hakyeon’s hips down to meet his, feeling the way Hakyeon circles himself over Wonshik’s lap subconsciously. Just how he releases tension. Touch was all they’d had for the last few years. It was like a commodity. 

But Wonshik tries not to think of that because then he thinks of Taek and Bin. 

As if reading his mind, Hakyeon releases a low, pained whine. Wonshik strokes the back of his neck, tracing the sharp lines of their tattoo, kissing the hollow of Hakyeon’s clavicle. 

“Who is here, Hakyeon?” 

Hakyeon stills his hips, and Wonshik feels him, half-hard, shaking, yet every bit still the strong leader VIXX has always needed and trusted. 

“The men in red. The ones who took them from us. They came back for more,” Hakyeon breathes, sagging against Wonshik’s chest. 

Wonshik tenses but tries not to let Hakyeon feel it. Instead, he lifts Hakyeon up in his arms, Hakyeon’s legs instinctively coiling around Wonshik’s waist as he carts him off to their room, the abandoned school infirmary from the South End Elementary. The school had, like everyone assumed, sunk underground, sucked below the earth like the bomb had been a sinking ship, pulling everything around it down with horrific suction. 

Wonshik places Hakyeon down on their bed, five of the old infirmary cots pushed together, which had fit them all back before they’d lost Taekwoon, before they’d lost Hongbin. 

Jaehwan looks up from his spot at the end, dropping his book to his lap. He mouths to Wonshik: he okay?

Wonshik shrugs, pulling the blankets up over Hakyeon and touching a cool palm to his cheek. Hakyeon presses into the touch and sighs. 

Wonshik climbs into bed beside Hakyeon, and Jaehwan slides over to sandwich himself on the other side of Hakyeon, the two of them spooned around him tightly. 

“He saw the vans again,” Wonshik whispers. 

“I know. I saw them too.”

“I’m afraid for him, Jae. Hakyeon has always been so resilient, so confident. I’m afraid that the longer he goes without them, the weaker he’ll get.”

Jaehwan drops his gaze to the gentle curve of Hakyeon’s cheek. They’d all always joked about how Hakyeon managed to stay so fleshy in parts, when the rest of him was so sharp, so jagged. His jaw, his arms, his toned calves and thin ankles. But when they splayed their fingers over his stomach, his cheeks, his thighs, they were still soft, plush, comforting. 

The two sides to the person who had guided them out of the dark. 

“We have to get them back, Jae.”

“I think I have an idea,” Jaehwan whispers, still sweeping his gaze over Hakyeon’s face, his long, tan throat. “But you’re going to hate it.”

Wonshik cocks his head up from his pillow. “Why am I going to hate it? Is someone going to have to do something stupid and potentially-deadly?”

Jaehwan lifts one corner of his lips into a crooked smile. “I think what we need is a Trojan horse.”

“You’ve lost me. Remember, my parents never let me finish middle school.”

“We need an insider. We need someone fucking foolish enough to march in headfirst. Someone so desperate, so naive, so reckless that they’ll willingly enter enemy territory.”

“Well, as long as it isn’t one of us, I don’t give a fuck who goes in, as long as Taek and Binnie come out in the end.”

Jaehwan’s lips spread fully now into a charmingly haunting grin. “We just need to find someone young and stupid, someone who has lost everything precious to him, someone--”

Wonshik peers down at Hakyeon again, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest beneath the blankets, and he knows he would do anything, would risk anyone. 

“Someone who needs us.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I'm so excited that people seem to like this story. I honestly haven't worked out all the kinks yet, but the more I play around with it, the more I fall in love with it. I can't wait to show you guys more. Please, please keep commenting and giving this story some love if you want to see more--your comments are what really fires me up!!! (also if anyone is having fears about the pairings, there will be end-game pairings--)

HAKYEON: 

THREE YEARS PRIOR TO THE END OF OLD CITY

 

“Hakyeon, this is dumb.”

Hakyeon peered down from his perch in the rafters of the ballroom, where he was building a shoebox nest, taped to the beam. Taekwoon stood, broom in hand, glowering up at him from the dark wood stage below.

“I just want to know what goes on at these things, Taek,” Hakyeon explained, placing his sound recorder into the box on one of the thick metal beams. “I’m gonna jump now, so please catch me.”

Taekwoon took a large step back, turning his face away. 

“I was joking, but I see the extent of your loyalty,” Hakyeon sniffled, clambering over the beams on his hands and knees until he reached the thin wooden ladder behind the stage. 

Taekwoon continued to pretend to sweep the already spotless floor while Hakyeon came up behind him and tugged on his hair. Taekwoon’s head jerked back, but his gaze remained empty and unamused. 

“Aren’t you curious? We’ve been cleaning up their stupid parties for a year now, and we never have any idea what they’re about. The least they could do would be to invite us,” Hakyeon grumbled, brushing dust from the knees of his torn jeans. 

“They’re just rich people. They probably just get together to talk about the war, complain about all the homeless people, and lick each other’s buttholes,” Taekwoon replied bitterly, waving the broom over the floor so the dust just formed a tiny cyclone moving round and round by his feet. 

“Well, I guess we will finally find out, right?” 

Hakyeon pulled Taekwoon into a hug, which Taekwoon barely reacted to, except to drop his broom to the floor, his hands hanging limply at his sides. 

“What if it just confirms what we’ve been thinking,” Taekwoon murmurs, lips tickling Hakyeon’s neck beside his ear. 

“Then we do something about it,” Hakyeon said, tightening his hold around Taekwoon’s middle. Hakyeon was always surprised at how broad Taekwoon really was, how his arms fit just right around Taekwoon’s body. He felt so secure, so safe. 

“And, what? Join the rebels? You know that ‘rebel’ is just a trigger word now. The word all these rich elite fucks are using to get us to dismiss anyone who claims they’re in the rebellion,” Taekwoon said, pulling away, his brows tightly knit, his bottom lip sucked into his mouth anxiously. 

“That’s the point, Taek. We gotta find out why they want us to hate the rebellion, you know, other than the fact that they threatened to bomb everyone,” Hakyeon said, grabbing the front of Taekwoon’s coat and pulling him in again. “Just give me tonight. If we don’t find out anything, I’ll let it go. I promise.”

Taekwoon reached for Hakyeon’s hand, latching their pinky fingers together. 

“You have to kiss it,” Hakyeon teased, tugging their locked fingers closer to his face, so he could kiss where his thumb and forefinger made a circle. He held his lips to his hand, eyebrows raised, until Taekwoon leaned in and pressed his lips to his own hand in reply. 

 

Taekwoon clutched his cool palm to his stinging cheek. 

“What are you a spy? Some kind of indoctrinated, brainwashed child soldier?”

He held his gaze on his shoes, trying to focus on the soft smudge of black over the toe of his left shoe. 

Don’t react, Hakyeon thought, huddled behind the stage where he and three girls stood watching. 

“Mr. Lee won’t really hurt him,” one of the girls was saying, trying to distract Hakyeon, keep him from barging out after Taekwoon. But he needed to let it continue. Taekwoon was positioned right below the recorder, right where Hakyeon needed him to be. 

“Yeah? Just like how he didn’t hurt you?” Hakyeon snipped, shifting his eyes over just briefly to the girl’s poorly-disguised black eye, buried beneath layers of concealer. 

“It was my fault,” she said, turning her bad eye away from Hakyeon. “I didn’t close the deal.” Her eyes were watering now, and one of the other girls, one with short, spiked hair, pulled her into the circle of her arms, cooing gently. 

“Who are the rebels?” Hakyeon tried again, wheeling around on the short-haired girl. 

She had sharp features, almost masculine. There was something possessive, protective, in her stance. The third girl was standing behind her silently, knowing she would speak for all of them.

“Why the hell would we know? We’re just performers. Mr. Lee hired us a couple years ago, and we’ve been training since then, and now you’re fucking up our chance to prove ourselves,” the girl hissed, pulling the smallest girl--the one with the purple bruise around her left eye--behind her. 

“What the hell does he need performers for? He’s a businessman. This is supposed to be an auction banquet isn’t it?” 

“It is an auction,” the girl said, watching as Taekwoon emerged back behind the curtain where they were standing. 

Hakyeon grabbed for his wrist, needing the warmth of his body beside him. 

“What are they trading?”

Taekwoon held a card out to Hakyeon, his cheek a faded pink color now. Hakyeon wanted to reach out, soothe it somehow, but Taekwoon didn’t seem to be noticing any pain anymore. 

TONIGHT ONLY-- FEEL THE EFFECT--AMBER, LUNA, VICTORIA--BIDDING STARTS AT 9 PM. 

Hakyeon held the card, squinting at it, turning it over. “I don’t get it. What is ‘the effect?’”

The quiet girl, the tallest one in the back with a curtain of dark hair around her thin face, piped up, “We are.”

“Vic,” the short-haired girl hissed. “We aren’t supposed to--”

Hakyeon saw it then. He saw the reason why there was never any advertisement, never any display for art or goods. Because--

“You are the goods,” Hakyeon breathed, feeling bile tickling the base of his throat. 

 

The tape ended up revealing very little more than what Hakyeon had gathered from meeting with Amber and the Effect. Amber explained briefly that some groups get more than one chance to sell. Those groups were lucky. The others were put back in training--best case scenario--or ‘put away.’ Hakyeon assumed that was obviously worst case scenario. 

Amber said it was their last chance. 

And she begged Hakyeon and Taekwoon to leave before they lost it. 

“I don’t think the rebels are bad,” Luna had said, pulling Hakyeon away for a moment, away from Amber. “They want us to think that.”

“What do you mean? Aren’t the rebels the ones with the bombs we’re always hearing about?” 

Luna had shrugged, face turned down, her heavy bruise cast in shadow of the bright artificial lighting of the stage. “We knew a few people in the training center who said they were going to leave. Going to join the rebels. They weren’t bad people. They were just out of options. But I don’t think they would bomb anyone. Truly.”

 

“I can’t make sense of it, Taek,” Hakyeon said, pacing around their apartment, rubbing at the tired skin of his face. “If the bad guys aren’t the rebels, and the rebels aren’t the bad guys, and the rebels don’t have the bombs, then who, then what? What are we supposed to be afraid of?”

Taekwoon held his hand out from the couch, where he was tucked up against the arm with a thick pillow and a tabloid magazine. 

“Stop reading those,” Hakyeon said, sweeping down over Taekwoon’s lap. Taekwoon coiled his arms around Hakyeon’s hips. 

“They make me angry,” Taekwoon said in reply.

“Exactly, so why are you reading them?” 

Taekwoon tipped his chin up, stoically murmuring, “Because I’m afraid if I stop being angry, I’ll grow numb.”

Hakyeon remembered now. Why he needed Taekwoon. Why he found him in the first place. Why he treasured him. 

Because Taekwoon was like him. They were vastly different in most ways, in all the outward ways. But inside, Taekwoon was all fire. He was all fight. 

“They want us to stop being angry. That’s why they rarely show the news anymore. That’s why they only have one news caster who always says the same things. They’re always name dropping the rebels hoping we’ll be so afraid that we’ll stop listening, we’ll stop caring. We can’t ever stop, okay?” Hakyeon pleaded, cupping Taekwoon’s pillowy cheeks in his tan palms. 

Taekwoon nodded, held in Hakyeon’s hands, before he lifted his face up again to touch their lips together. “I’ll never stop.”

 

WONSHIK:

PRESENT

Wonshik tries not to make too much noise. Fist pressed to his lips, legs still beneath the sheets, just the occasional puff of air from his nostrils. 

It’s Jaehwan, though, that’s always making the noise. 

It’s like he purposefully exaggerates the obscene sounds of his mouth, his throat. The lewd suction, the gagging, the spit. He multiplies them tenfold because he knows Wonshik both relishes and despises them. There’s something about how desperate and needy Jaehwan must be to choke himself, but also Wonshik is always aware of how aware Jaehwan is of this fact. 

Everything Jaehwan does has two purposes. To please you and to please himself. 

“Nothing like waking to the sounds of sloppy head,” Hakyeon groans, slowly blinking awake and turning to Wonshik, propping his head on his fist, elbow bent on the pillow. He smiles sleepily, so beautiful and disheveled. 

Jaehwan lifts his head from under the sheets and grins at Hakyeon with spit and precome slick lips. 

“There she is,” he crows, voice hoarse from gagging. 

Wonshik grabs the back of his head and presses him back down under the covers. “Finish what you started, since you woke me up from  _ my  _ nap by getting me all hard.”

Hakyeon has that twinkle in his eyes that he always has when he looks at them, even when they’re being vulgar. 

He taps his cheek, and Wonshik shifts a bit to be able to press a kiss to Hakyeon’s pillow-creased skin. 

“I’m going out there today,” Hakyeon says, making himself comfortable against the headboard as he watches.

Jaehwan takes Wonshik deep into his throat, pulling his red lips back to tease the head of Wonshik’s cock as he lifts his gaze to Hakyeon, arches an eyebrow in question.

“You’re not going alone,” Wonshik says, grunting the words a bit. 

“You’re not giving me an order,” Hakyeon replies, still grinning pleasantly despite the biting tone to his words. “Actually, in fact, I am going alone.”

Jaehwan slides his gaze over to Wonshik, tonguing at the slit of his cock as he wags his eyebrows in Hakyeon’s direction.  _ Tell him the plan _ . 

Wonshik clears his throat, trying to gather his bearings. He shudders a bit before saying, “We thought of something.”

Hakyeon slides closer to Wonshik, traces the sloping shell of his ear with a warm fingertip. “It’s always dangerous when you’ve been thinking. Especially together.”

“Aw c’mon Hakyeon,” Jaehwan gurgles, lips spread wide around Wonshik. 

“Yeah, you know it was always Hongbin with the bad plans,” Wonshik says, before thinking better of it. 

Hakyeon’s gentle smile slips from his face, and the shutters pass over his eyes. “What’s the plan then?”

Jaehwan, sensing the need for a distraction, gags hard around Wonshik, who groans loudly and comes suddenly, hands fisted in the sheets and head tossed back against the headboard. 

Jaehwan swallows quickly and climbs back up the bed to curl into Hakyeon’s chest. 

“We were thinking,” Jaehwan breathes, panting heavily, lips chapped and swollen, fingers tracing over Hakyeon’s bare chest. “We could have someone go in for us. Someone get voluntarily taken by the men in red.”

Hakyeon stiffens, inhaling shakily. “Who would be dumb enough to--”

“Someone who doesn’t know. Someone who can only think about retrieving whoever was taken from them. Someone from the colonies that doesn’t know the rebels weren’t the ones with the bombs. Someone who trusts us.”

“We don’t have anyone like that,” Hakyeon replies, eyes trained on the doorway in that lost way they often do when he’s hoping he’ll see Taekwoon and Hongbin step through it. 

“The vans have been spotted in the area. We know they’re going to hit the Old City colonies again. They’re circling, looking for a way in,” Wonshik says, brushing Hakyeon’s fringe back from his eyes. 

“So, what? We just let them take someone? Hide in the background and watch until they drive away with someone’s Taekwoon? Someone’s Hongbin? And then we swoop in and seduce them into working for us?” Hakyeon croaks. 

“Well,” Jaehwan replies, “yeah, pretty much.”

“We aren’t going to let you go in there, Hakyeon,” Wonshik warns. “You know better than anyone what you’d be going up against. Plus, don’t you think we could use another body with us? I’m getting tired of seeing so much of this beast,” he adds, nodding over at Jaehwan, who gasps, affronted. 

“We could stop them,” Hakyeon pleads, turning from Jaehwan to Wonshik and back. “You know we could. You want me to let them take more when I could stop them.”

Wonshik and Jaehwan nod solemnly. “It’s like that old adage. The man has already learned to fish, so stopping him from catching a fish isn’t going to return the fish to...wait, I don’t think that’s right.”

Wonshik drops his head into his hands and sighs. 

Hakyeon giggles behind his palm, and Wonshik quickly moves his hands away from his eyes to watch, enraptured by it. 

“Fine,” Hakyeon says finally. “But I get to pick him.”

Jaehwan glances at Wonshik, eyebrows raised. Wonshik nods. 

“If we hear engines, you’re letting me go,” Hakyeon adds. “Alone.”

Jaehwan’s glance turns into a glare when Wonshik nods again. Wonshik mouths  _ no choice _ .

Hakyeon slides out of the bed, Jaehwan pawing at his now-empty warm spot of mattress. 

“It smells like sex in here,” he says, waving a hand in front of his nose and chuckling. “Someone make me food.”

 

SANGHYUK: 

“Sungjae,” Sanghyuk says, tapping on Sungjae’s chin where he’s turned away towards the barren hills that still occasionally roll with smoke, with toxic gas. 

“Mm?”

“Do you remember a boy named Hakyeon? From South End?” 

Sungjae blinks for a few moments before nodding. “The one who set fire to the gym when he found out Mr. Whatshisface, uh, the coach, was hitting players, right?”

Sanghyuk’s lips spread into a wide grin as he recalls the memory of fire alarms blaring, Hakyeon’s hand on his wrist, tugging, tugging, panting, laughing--

“Hello?” Sungjae waves his hand in front of Sanghyuk’s face and leans his sharp face close to Sanghyuk’s cheek. “You in there?”

“Yeah, sorry. I just...Jackson said he heard one of the rebels call another one Hakyeon,” Sanghyuk says, watching plumes of greenish dust rise up atop the hills like a tide. The dust doesn’t normally stir so much, but Sanghyuk has no idea what the wind is like out there where it’s now so flat and empty. Must be like a vortex. 

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Sungjae replies, laying back on the pile of warm stones they sat upon while waiting for the dinner line to lessen. “If anyone were going to drop a bomb for no reason, it would be Cha Hakyeon.”

“He wasn’t like that,” Sanghyuk says defensively, hand pressed to Sungjae’s bony chest where he’s leaning down over him. 

Sungjae nudges at the hem of Sanghyuk’s shirt and rubs at his hip, smirking. “Oh, that’s right. You liked him, didn’t you?”

Sanghyuk turns back to the hills, hiding the flush of his cheeks. “Fuck no. The kid was crazy. He just wasn’t crazy enough to kill thousands and thousands of innocent people, you know? Just gymnasium-fire crazy.”

Sungjae laughs and shakes his head. “If you say so. If he’s a rebel, though, Sanghyuk, you should stay away, even if he isn’t drop-a-bomb crazy. He’s still in with them.”

Sanghyuk presses his lips together, feeling the peeling skin of his bottom lip against his cupid’s bow. It’s unpleasant, but it distracts him for a moment from the tightness in his chest.

“What if he could help get Moonbin back, ‘Jae?” Sanghyuk murmurs weakly, watching the tide of dust ripple and disperse suddenly as if blown back by something. 

“You say ‘back,’ but you don’t even know where he is. We have no idea where the rebels took him.”

“I don’t think it was the rebels, ‘Jae. They were men in --”

“I know, I know. The men in red.” Sungjae sits up and takes Sanghyuk’s face into his hands, touching the tips of their noses together, his breath warm against Sanghyuk’s lips. “We’re in a tight spot, Hyuk. We’re told to keep going, keep surviving, but we have no guarantee for how long. For how long we can keep doing this. We don’t know when another bomb may drop. We don’t know who dropped it or why or if the destruction of the city was even their goal. But, listen to me, okay?”

Sanghyuk nods, cheeks cradled gently in Sungjae’s cool palms, his skin peeling roughly from blisters and calluses. 

“You’re going to keep going no matter what, all right? We fought for all these days, all these nights, and we’re going to keep doing that. Even if we never get Moonbin back. Even if Hakyeon didn’t drop the bomb. You’re going to keep going because I need you, got it?”

Jackson’s head appears at the foot of their little tower of stones, and he climbs up onto their rock, grappling with the shallow footholds. “Hey, am I interrupting the confession?”

Sungjae laughs and swats at Jackson’s face as he leans in to bat his eyelashes coyly. 

“Oh fuck off,” Sanghyuk says, rolling his eyes. 

“Holy shit, is that a tornado?” Jackson squeals, crawling to the edge of the perch. “I haven’t seen one of those since I was a kid on the island. You could see ‘em off the horizon, three kilometers high, just massive shadows, sucking everything into ‘em,” Jackson exclaims, cupping his hands around his eyes to block the light.

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen one.”

“Ah, right,” Jackson replies, squinting into the distance, “city boy Hyuk, right? You ever even seen any trees?”

Sanghyuk scoffs dismissively. “We had a park.”

“Uh huh,” Jackson chuckles. “Real nature right there. A seesaw and a few pines.”

Sanghyuk moves to tackle Jackson, but he’s already risen quickly to his feet. 

“Shit,” Jackson cries, pointing towards the clearing at the base of their little stone tower. “Get down. Go, go!”

Sungjae grabs for Jackson’s pant leg, staring up at him helplessly. “What is it? The tornado?”

Jackson shakes his head and starts pushing Sungjae to climb down off their rock perch. 

“The vans. There’s a whole horde of them.” 

The way he describes them, Sanghyuk thinks, like a pack, like scavengers.

Sanghyuk can feel his heart trying to break free from his body. He feels it so urgently it hurts. He feels like clawing it out of his chest just so he can think for a moment. 

But there’s no time to think. 

He and Sungjae and Jackson run into the colony clearing, Jackson screaming, “Everyone go! They’re here! For fuck’s sake, run!”

Sungjae’s hand is so light in Sanghyuk’s grip that Sanghyuk fears every couple seconds that he’s lost it. He keeps imagining looking down at his hand and seeing it empty, and he nearly trips each time he shifts his gaze down to make sure Sungjae is still there with him. 

“Just go, I’m right behind you,” Sungjae cries, pushing at Sanghyuk’s back. 

The engines are so loud and insistent in Sanghyuk’s ears, and he has no idea if it is the memory of having the one van so close to him when they took Moonbin or if there really are so many of them and they’re surrounded. 

The first one to scream is Mrs. Yang, and it’s the only sound Sanghyuk has ever heard her force out of her lips, and it’s so haunted and terrified that everyone stops to look at her. 

“No,” she shrieks, watching as they wrestle one of the elders to the ground, gun pressed to his temple. 

Sungjae is shoving at Sanghyuk’s back still, even more urgently than before. “Please, Hyuk, just run. There’s no point. It’s just us, remember?”

Jackson has an old pocket knife drawn when they round the corner, just past the clearing of tents, and he’s still yelling, “Go, just go!”

Sanghyuk sees then, sees the men in red, laughing as they move in on Jackson with his puny, childish weapon, taunting him.

One of the men knocks Jackson’s feet out from under him, but not before he manages a swipe between the guy’s eyes, where his skin is bare above the mask. His nose splits open like petals unfurling. 

“For fuck’s sake,” the guy chokes, hands flying to his face to stop the gush of blood into his nose and mouth. “Just take them. He said he needs two boys.”

Sanghyuk is standing still, feet feeling like his shoes have been packed with lead, despite Sungjae’s insistent yanking on his arms. Sungjae is crying now, tears budding in his eyelashes and nostrils and chin. 

“Please, Hyuk, please let’s just go. I only need you to run, just run, please.”

One man strikes Jackson on the side of the head so hard that he goes limp and collapses. Sanghyuk has never seen someone drop so silently, lifelessly. Sungjae is screaming now, choking on the sound of fear. 

“Someone will come,” Sanghyuk whispers desperately. “Someone has to come.”

“No one is coming,” Sungjae pleads, managing to pull Sanghyuk into their tent, guiding him to hide under their cot, shrouding it under the blankets. “Just keep quiet, okay? Just quiet.”

Sanghyuk feels like his breath is louder than it’s ever been, just to spite him. It sounds like rasping, wheezing inhalations each time he draws breath. 

In his mind, Sanghyuk imagines the winds of a tornado tearing at the tent, rending the spikes from the earth, whipping everything up into the air, up into madness where nothing matters but the wind and the moisture in the air. That wouldn’t be so bad. 

The only thing Sanghyuk remembers about tornadoes is that they form when things are unsettled. When the weather is too humid, too hot, too fucked up. Deep in his gut, Sanghyuk knows this is a tornado. It must be. They fucked everything up too badly, there are too many forces working against one another, and here this massive force comes to wreck them, punish them. This is what you assholes get for ruining everything.

Sungjae, his body shaking beside Sanghyuk’s beneath the cot, stifles a sob against Sanghyuk’s shoulder. 

Sanghyuk cranes his neck, so he can look at him. 

“I’m sorry,” he breathes. 

Sungjae shakes his head, tears dripping over his high cheekbones and spilling onto the canvas floor. 

“I’m really so fucking sorry,” Sanghyuk breathes again. 

Sungjae presses his lips together and shoves his fist against his lips as he chokes on another sob. 

“I’m gonna fix this.”

Sungjae can’t gather a response. 

The tent rips open, three sets of heavy boots stomping over their tiny space, their meager possessions, one of them kicking Jackson’s abandoned music player against the metal chest they stored their clothing in.

Sungjae grips onto Sanghyuk’s forearm, his hands shaking so hard the motions feel like vibrations. He leans in, kisses the shell of Sanghyuk’s ear, and then Sanghyuk loses him. 

A hand shoots beneath the cot and latches into Sungjae’s hair, yanking, and he’s screaming, and Sanghyuk can’t even explain what it feels like to listen to your own heart shatter completely, can’t even relay what it feels like to listen to his most precious person issuing the most devastating sound imaginable, a sound of utter devastation. 

Sanghyuk crawls out from under the cot as quickly as he can manage, grabbing onto one of the men by the ankle. 

The man shakes him off and stamps at his face, the force driving him down so hard that his vision blurs. Everything spins for a few moments before it rights itself enough for him to get back up. He can taste blood in his mouth as he scrambles out of the tent after the men.

Sungjae is eerily quiet where he’s thrown over one of the men in red’s shoulders, his head hanging limply against the man’s spine in the distance in front of Sanghyuk.

“Sungjae! Yook Sungjae!” Sanghyuk cries out, spitting blood into the dirt as he weakly runs toward the van, where Sanghyuk can see Jackson knocked out on the floor at the back. 

“Please, take me, please, fucking hell, please,” Sanghyuk is babbling, falling forward onto his hands a few times where the rocky dirt sinks in places as he fights to catch up. The men toss Sungjae like a sandbag beside Jackson into the van, and the door shuts with a heavy finality. 

Sanghyuk grabs a jagged-edged stone from the ground and heaves it after the man moving towards the driver’s side. The stone hits the mirror beside his door, shattering the glass. 

The man laughs and leans out the driver’s side window to point his gun squarely at Sanghyuk’s chest. 

“Fuck outta here, kid. Count yourself lucky.”

“Take me,” he begs again. 

“We were told two, we got two. Don’t worry though, little fella, we’ll be back. Good to know there are still kids dreaming the dream,” the man crows, careening the car towards the edge of the clearing, leaving Sanghyuk in the cloud of dust and rubble. 

And then Sanghyuk can’t stop the pain from bursting from his lips.

He wonders again how much a person has to lose before his sense of loss just...disappears. Is there a threshold of pain that he will eventually cross and then feel nothing? 

There’s a sound like what Sanghyuk recalls old gunshots used to sound like--puncturing the air almost deafeningly--and the van’s back window blows out. 

The van doesn’t stop, despite the damage. 

There are no more gunshots, and then Sanghyuk blacks out. 

 

HAKYEON: 

The first thing Hakyeon notices is Taekwoon’s jacket, loose at the boy’s shoulders but short at the wrists. 

The second is the way the boy’s lips, tainted with blood, are still moving, still screaming at the van even after it drives away. 

And then the boy collapses into the dirt as if all his bones disintegrated. Or as if the weight of his loss finally struck him.

Hakyeon has never seen anyone faint from emotional distress before. 

It’s kind of precious. 

Hopping down from the heap of bricks he’d been standing atop as he watched, Hakyeon scans the distance for any more vans, more men in red, but they’ve all driven off. 

He comes to stand beside the boy where he’s curled up on the ground, peering down at his soft, young face.

He squats down, blocking the sun from the boy’s face, and he wipes the dried blood from the corner of the boy’s mouth. 

“Hello, little one,” he cooes as the boy’s eyes blink open slowly, eyelids fluttering like weary wings. “This world is much too dangerous for someone so sweet. So alone.”

The boy’s eyes open, but his gaze is vacant, and it reminds Hakyeon so much of Taekwoon that his chest aches. 

It reminds Hakyeon of the time his father handed him a paper lotus, told him to be gentle-- _ lightly, Hakyeon, lightly _ \--but in his excitement, Hakyeon had pinched the pale pink petals to watch them bend, and then they wouldn’t bend back into place again. 

Hakyeon scoops his arms under the boy and lifts him up over his shoulder. “Much, much too dangerous.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
